Preserving the Past, Looking to the Future
Lisa Jordan Spires
The paintings that decorate the Tomb of Menna are some of the most viewed in Egypt’s Theban Necropolis — an area on the west bank of the Nile used for ritual burials during Pharoanic times. At nearly 3,500 years old they are also some of the most endangered.
Melinda Hartwig, an associate professor of Egyptian art and archaeology in the Ernest G. Welch School of Art and Design, is part of a team that is working hard to ensure that the ancient art can be enjoyed by future generations.
Hartwig is field director and principal investigator on a project to analyze and preserve the tomb’s architecture and decoration. So far, her team has completed two seasons of work, conserving the tomb chapel and completing a survey of the site. They are now focusing on digitally photographing the tomb and further protecting it with a new floor, LED lights and a barrier system to protect the walls.
“Since the Tomb of Menna is one of the most-visited tombs in the Theban Necropolis, careful protection and presentation of the paintings is essential,” she said.
Hartwig’s team is using state-of-the-art archaeometric techniques to measure the chemical and organic compositions of the tomb’s plaster, pigments and binders. These techniques use light to analyze the chemicals used in the pigment and do not involve touching the walls, so they will not harm the ancient paintings. So far, it has yielded some unexpected discoveries, Hartwig said.
“The archaeometry revealed that the artists used arsenic sulfide-based pigments mixed with natural occurring ochers,” she said. “This is interesting because both colors are usually used in royal tombs because they are hard to find and make colors more vibrant. Clearly, Menna had access to the best materials and artists to make his tomb, even though he was only an overseer and scribe of royal and temple fields.”
Hartwig said Menna’s tomb may have been decorated using these pigments because his daughters were ladies-in-waiting in the royal court of Amenhotep III, or that Menna may have had access to grain, which ancient Egyptians used to barter for goods and services.
“The Tomb of Menna is a primer of what could be done in ancient Egyptian paintings,” Hartwig said.
Not much is known about the painters who worked on the tomb — artists were anonymous in ancient Egypt — but Hartwig and her team have been able to gather evidence that at least three different artists had a hand in decorating the tomb chapel and that the work was completed in several phases.
“The tomb chapel was also visited by later people who left graffiti commenting on the decoration,” she said. “Also, motifs and texts were copied by other tomb owners for a period of over 800 years.”
The tomb has been the target of conservation efforts over the years, and as few records on these efforts exist, Hartwig’s team used archival photos to reconstruct previous preservation projects.
“So far, we have one phase done in 1913 to 1915, another in the early 1950s and the last in the 1980s or 1990s,” Hartwig said. “A lot of these repairs needed to be redone, which was the bulk of work during the 2008 season.”
Hartwig is working in cooperation with the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt and said the council’s secretary general, Zahi Hawass, hopes the Tomb of Menna project will be a pilot program to establish a new methodology for documentation and restoration work in other Theban tombs.
Visit the Tomb of Menna Project web site for more information.